"He came here to learn about empathy," Stanford professor Jeremy Bailenson told Recode.net. "He really wanted to understand how to think about issues of race, issues of gender. A lot of our lab's research is about having people think about becoming someone else, and that's why Goodell came."

Bailenson didn’t elaborate on what situations they put Goodell in, but here are a few roles I hope he played to better understand others:

— Ricky Williams at Coachella.
— An appeals court judge who shows up to work with yet another Deflategate motion to consider.
— A reporter tasked with asking Goodell’s smug, emotionless face an impactful question just to get a trite, defensive non-answer.

Maybe once Goodell understands those roles he can repair his image. But let’s face it, he was probably just playing Fruit Ninja with those goggles.